“Europe’s conditions for INSTEX humiliating”

[Iran’s Chief Justice, Sadegh Larijani, lashes out at INSTEX, the financial mechanism offered to Iran, calling its preconditions as humiliating for Iran.]

Sadegh Larijani: For 9 months, Europeans were hesitating and killing time. Now after 9 months, they have created a financial mechanism called INSTEX, and they want to give a very limited capacity for financial transactions, in which not Islamic Republic’s exact money, but foods and drugs will be given to the Islamic Republic. Americans meanly and viciously pulled out of the JCPOA after two years that they were committed to it. Now Europeans, who claim to endorse the JCPOA and we’re going to fulfill Islamic Republic’s benefits in the JCPOA, have created a very limited financial mechanism with two strange preconditions (this has been reported and I haven’t seen the text yet). Two strange preconditions: the first one is that the Islamic Republic must accept FATF, and the second is we must negotiate about the missile program. The Islamic Republic will not – and should not – accept these humiliating preconditions. Our officials must be careful. We should not give in to all their demands, on the excuse of little waterway they want to open for us. They were obliged to remove sanctions from the Islamic Republic. From the beginning, they lied and broke their promises. Now they want to create another mechanism with all these preconditions. Is the Islamic Republic so weak [to give in to all these preconditions] for just drugs and foods that you want to offer for selling oil?